A domestic animal, such as a dog, requires period “walking” by an owner or other caretaker, in order to give the animal exercise and to allow the animal to urinate and defecate in an outdoor location. In urban and suburban environments, an ordinance typically requires the animal to be walked only while leashed, whereas “clean-up” ordinances generally require the animal's caretaker to take responsibility for removing defecated fecal matter, or “droppings”. Bags, scoops and the like are known that allow a pet owner to clean up droppings after the animal has completed defecation.
This is known to be a messy and disagreeable proposition for the animal's caretaker. Consequently, noncompliance with the clean-up ordinance is a frequent occurrence. The unremoved droppings become an unsightly nuisance and hazard for pedestrians. More importantly, the droppings can pose a significant environmental and health problem, because they are eventually transported into storm drains and/or a watershed where they are known, in the aggregate, to release significant amounts of hazardous pathogens, including E. coli bacteria, fecal coliform bacteria, salmonella and giardia. 
Furthermore, even when the droppings are promptly cleaned up by the animal's caretaker (typically, by collecting the droppings in a plastic bag) the plastic bag is frequently deposited by the caretaker into a street-side waste receptacle or home garbage container. As a result, the droppings become an unpleasant nuisance and/or biohazard to those involved in subsequent processing of municipal garbage, and/or a significant landfill pollutant. Thus, significant environmental problems are associated with animal droppings, whether or not they are attended to in compliance with the clean-up ordinance.
The nature and magnitude of the above mentioned problems are further described in the following references, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated into the present application in their entireties: Watson, Traci, “Dog waste poses threat to water, USA Today, Jun. 6, 2002; Maixner, Jean, “Dog Waste Polluting Washington's Beautiful Watershed, Seattle PI, Jun. 16, 2009; Kho, Nancy Davis, “Eco-friendly disposal of dog waste: bag or flush?”, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 13, 2011.
Improved techniques for cleaning up the droppings of domestic animals are therefore desirable.